


MCU Wednesday

by PaigeTico



Series: xXFallenstarXx's BuckyNat Week 2017 [4]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Damaged Natasha Romanov, F/M, Gen, It's not really romance so I tagged it gen as well, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), i'm sorry i promise the next one will have loads of mushy lovey dovey stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-24
Updated: 2017-03-24
Packaged: 2018-10-09 23:42:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10424454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PaigeTico/pseuds/PaigeTico
Summary: Natasha comes to King T'Challa to join the rest of Team Cap following the Civil War. Bucky is cryogenically frozen and yet... he's still the only one she can really talk to.





	

**Author's Note:**

> YEAHHH BOY TWO FICS IN ONE DAY I'M FINALLY CATCHING UP

Natalia looks around anxiously. She's called King T’Challa in advance, so he should be expecting her, but something about waltzing into an unknown place with no backup does not feel right. 

T’Challa himself is there to greet her. He assures her that he holds no grudges and that they can start anew, as friends. She's thankful for that, but doesn't know what to think of it. Friends weren't necessarily a good thing, considering they could manipulate or blackmail you into acting against your own will. Someone as powerful as the King of Wakanda could potentially be either a very useful or very dangerous friend to have.

Her room is simple and plain, and she doesn't have anything to decorate it with. She makes a beeline for Steve’s room. 

‘Natasha!’ he exclaims. ‘Good to see you. Sam and the others are just down the hall.’

She nods. Apparently, someone disabled the security of the floating prison where the rest of Steve’s team had been incarcerated and somehow, quite a lot of high-risk prisoners had escaped. It made sense that they'd be here as well.

Natalia swallows. ‘Do you know where James— where Bucky is?’

Steve turns away slightly. Probably an unconscious thing, but Natalia has been trained to pick up these subtle things. 

‘He… he asked to be put back under. Cryogenically frozen,’ clarifies Steve. 

‘But where is he?’ persists Natalia. 

Steve opens his mouth as if to discourage her from going, then apparently thinks better of it. ‘I'll take you there—’

‘No, it's… fine. Just tell me where it is.’

It is very much not fine, but no one needs to know that. Steve gives her a room number and after a bit of wandering, she finds the right room. (T’Challa told her she was more than welcome to explore, as long as she didn't enter any rooms marked ‘authorized personnel only’, so she assumed she was allowed in.) 

The room is quite large, with a balcony overlooking a massive panther statue. It's sparsely decorated, like her own, but holds a kind of quiet elegance all the same. 

She realizes that she's avoiding what she came for. 

James is there. He looks almost like he's sleeping, except he's not breathing. She lets her eyes slide over him. 

His metal arm is gone, the stump covered by a black cloth. Tony’s work, probably. There are also numerous bruises and scratches dotting his skin, and it makes her heart hurt to see him so vulnerable, so small. 

‘Hello, Soldier,’ she whispers. It's a running joke with them. Or it was, back in the KGB Red Room. He’s supposed to reply with ‘Hello, Agent.’ 

And she starts to talk. Some say that unconscious people can still hear and else what's going on around them. Natalia's been knocked out plenty of times and was never aware of people talking around her, but in any case she's not really talking to him. Or to herself. 

Why is she talking? To get the feeling of loneliness and stark _other_ -ness off her chest, perhaps. To take a burden off her back without giving it to someone else. 

‘That's your cue, James. You're supposed to say ‘Hello, Agent’. But then!, I don't suppose you can, being frozen and all that.

I don’t know what I’m doing here. I shouldn’t be here. There’s every possibility that T’Challa is going to betray us all. I shouldn’t be saying that, but it’s true.

Do you even remember me? Us, training and fighting together. Until they took you away, and the next time I saw you, you weren’t James, you were the Winter Soldier.

If they ever find a way to de-program the trigger words from your mind… well, I hope you can still remember me. It’s selfish, I know, but that’s how humans work. We do our best to be kind and grateful, but in the end we fight for ourselves. And surely after all the bullshit you and I have been through, the universe owes you at least your memories intact.’

***

She comes back every now and then. She keeps talking, and talking, and talking. For all she knows T’Challa has a security camera in that room and has been listening in on her, even showing the rest of the team the tapes, but she can’t bring herself to care. 

There’s this odd sensation of being detached and separate from everyone else. She came to T’Challa for some companionship, but not much has really changed. The team eats together and talks like old times, but something irreversible has changed between them. She is the only one here who betrayed Tony to be here. It’s only her nature, she supposes. Being a spy, it’s ingrained into her mind. Betray whichever team you were originally on. In the end, it’s just who she is.

So she talks to James. 

‘Remember when we had to go incognito as a couple on a mission once? I had fun that day, and I think you did as well. It was the first time I… I realized that I cared for you a lot more than I should have. The staged kisses and embraces felt real to me. 

I miss seeing you smile, James. It would be sickeningly romantic to say that after all these years I’ve never forgotten your smile, but that wouldn’t be true. It’s been so long that I can’t remember what it looks like. I can’t remember what you look like when you’re happy.’

James doesn’t show any reaction at all. He never does. He just keeps sleeping under the cold glass, slumbering.

***

Several weeks later, James comes out of cryo for a routine check-up. He wakes suddenly, cold mist pouring out of the tank. He’s dressed in all-white; a stark contrast, she notices, to the black combat suit of the Winter Soldier. Bright and hopeful, as opposed to dark and shadowed.

He looks around and sees Natalia first. His mouth twists into a half-smile. The very smile she hadn’t seen for years. ‘Hello, Agent.’ he says, voice slightly hoarse.

‘Hello, Soldier,’ answers Natalia automatically, out of habit. It’s only a few seconds later that she realizes what he’s just said.

‘I think I had a dream involving you,’ he continues. ‘I could hear you voice, but I didn’t know what you were saying.’

‘I _was_ talking to you,’ blurts Natalia. ‘I didn’t realize you could hear me.’

He climbs out of the tank and gives her a bone-crushing one-armed hug. ‘It’s good to see you.’


End file.
